US gunning for australia

For USWA’s (US Wheat Associates) Alan Tracy, the mood must be rapture, “I have been vindicated!” Australia’s UN Oil for Food Inquiry (Cole Inquiry) will see the collapse of International wheat trading giant, and USWA competitor, AWB Ltd.
When Tracy raised his concerns, back in 2002, he was fobbed off by the Australian’s and presumably then Sec Powell.
Justice Cole has now received damning evidence from two former executives of AWB, but worse than that for the beleaguered company, he has now taken in evidence from two of Saddam’s former henchmen.
The first is a record of interview with Iraq's former Trade Minister; Mohammed Medhi Saleh was interrogated by a panel of UN investigators in November 2004
Saleh told them AWB had for years been making payments to a Jordanian trucking company known as Alia, which kicked the money straight back to Saddam's regime.
That has now been supported with a sworn statement from Othman al-Absi, the general manager of Alia.
al-Absi said in the statement his company had always been part-owned by the Iraqi government, that it never provided genuine transport services in Iraq to AWB and it was simply a funnel to send money to Iraq in breach of UN sanctions.
All of which leaves AWB in a bit of a pickle. There is little doubt that Justice Cole will recommend prosecutions of a number of company officials, but the big question now is,; will it stop there?
For Tracy and USWEA to stop there represents nothing less than a pyrrhic victory; one which ignores the involvement of Australian and US administrations, and perhaps the UN itself, by commission or omission.  
The Howard government will be under intense pressure in parliament this week, caught in a pincer between a junior coalition party condoning AWB’s actions and an opposition wanting to dig out evidence of government complicity.
John Howard has much to defend, and will do so with great skill. Did he, his ministers or public servants know? He will demand nothing less than written proof, relying on the argument that verbal briefings are not official acts.
More difficult will be how the government explains the inflating, against world benchmark prices, the Australian wheat price by nearly $50 per tonne. Blind Freddy, and indeed, Alan Tracy could see the discrepancy in that.
If Howard sinks into this mess he will take George Bush along for the ride, as the same argument applies to the administration which dismissed Tracy’s concerns. If that happens it is odds on that both will be laying off blame to the UN, where these incredible deals were finally approved.
Good on you Tracy! But don’t stop now; if you keep digging we might just get to the bottom of this whole fiasco. We might even reach a point where world trade is based on some semblance of the mythical ‘level playing field’.